Bill Bridge: Terry's time is up and Capello must act now and give Rooney armband

FOR once the Football Association are acting with commendable restraint, not rushing to judgement over the appalling John Terry and giving Fabio Capello plenty of time to make up his mind over the England captaincy as he recuperates in Switzerland after a knee operation.

An operation of a different kind would be the recommended course of action for Terry in some quarters after revelations of his affair with the former girlfriend of his England and once Chelsea team-mate Wayne Bridge but, judging from the uproar, the country is demanding a change in the leadership of the national team.

Capello, being nothing less than a football man, will not rush to make up his mind and when he does it will be based purely on football issues. If he feels Terry has lost the backing of the England squad then he will be out of his job but not out of the team, he is far too important a player to be jettisoned only months before a World Cup tournament just because he has problems keeping his zip fastened.

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Over the next few days Capello will be talking to his key players and listening to the advice of the men he has around him in the England management group. He is unlikely to make any pronouncement before he faces the scribblers and cameras next weekend when the draw for the European Championships takes place.

But that will not halt the speculation and the frenzied chatter wherever football is a topic of conversation and the mood of the public, judging from spot checks taken in various watering holes over the weekend, is that Terry is no longer fit to wear the armband.

His latest skirmish with infamy has tipped what remained of his support – even among those who profess allegiance to Chelsea – over the edge.

His career has been blighted by unsavoury incidents, from his early days fighting in a London bar to various moments of incontinence in public. Add to that too many "kiss and tell" liaisons with young ladies picked up in night clubs, to efforts by his representatives to cash in on his position as England's captain, allegations against his parents involving drug dealing and shoplifting and suggestions that he shows people round Chelsea's training complex at Cobham for a consideration not far removed from 10,000. All of which have all stained his England-white shirt.

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No-one denies the right of a footballer, even an England captain, to have a few beers – if we did then the late Bobby Moore would not have become the icon he did, notwithstanding the fact that he had a little shoplifting unpleasantness of his own to deal with – but Terry has taken over from his team-mate Ashley Cole as the personification of all that is bad about today's professional footballers.

As such he must be replaced as England captain.

The question for Capello is not so much whether Terry has to go as who should take over the key role with a major tournament looming. Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand, even Frank Lampard, another from the Chelsea charm school, have their supporters but Capello will, hopefully, look at the longer term.

South Africa will soon be history; what England need is a captain for the next five or more years and none of the obvious candidates are likely to be around that long – judging by the way he played against Manchester City, Ferdinand will be lucky to even make this summer's trip.

If Capello does decide to bullet Terry the man for the job is Wayne Rooney. By far England's best player, Rooney has matured rapidly over the past 12 months or so and has the potential to grow into the England job in a way that no-one else in the game can match.

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Yes, he still has his silly, schoolboy moments but they are becoming much rarer than they were and yes, we accept he is hardly the most articulate young man on the planet, but we are talking football here, not a role with the United Nations.

Capello will have plenty of time, as he suffers through the physiotherapy and the long hours between sessions, to think things over. So far he has not put a foot wrong – apart from giving the England captaincy to Terry in the first place – and we can only hope that he has seen and heard enough of the mutt from Barking, that he will take this opportunity to restore some dignity to the game and elevate Rooney to the most-prized position an English footballer can enjoy.

THERE were tears from Andy Murray as his dream of winning a first grand slam tournament were brutally extinguished by a regal Roger Federer in Melbourne yesterday but at one breakfast table the mood was not quite so sombre.

Instead of tears, there was ready acknowledgement that Murray had enjoyed a splendid tournament and come up against a true champion at the top of his game. There was also a feeling that when – not if – Murray does become the first Briton to win a slam tournament since Fred Perry then it would be far, far better for him to do it at Wimbledon.

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It would be great for Murray, wonderful for the game and a reminder that he is a product of his own and his parents' making, an indictment of a system which is still failing the country.

and another thing...

RACING seems to have survived the recession as well as any sport judging by the investments which continue to be made and that applies perhaps more to Dubai than anywhere, despite the Gulf state's well-documented financial woes.

We hear stories Dubai's economy is in such a parlous state that they have to rely on support from wealthy neighbours Abu Dhabi to stay in business but that did not prevent them opening their new racecourse, said to have cost in the region of a 1b.

Meydan will next month host its first major meeting, the Dubai World Cup with a prize-fund for the big race of 6m – confirming once again that the first option for the ruling family when they want to make an impression is to throw piles of money into the arena.

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Thus the Maktoums have overseen the creation of a UFO-like grandstand 10 storeys high and stretching for five furlongs.

Is it on the agenda for a flying visit? No thanks. Give me a summer's afternoon or evening at Ripon, Beverley or Pontefract any time.

Keeping Yorkshire in safe hands despite scant Test recognition

WHENEVER those long enough in the tooth to remember Yorkshire's County Championship triumphs under Ronnie Burnet, Vic Wilson and Brian Close get together at lunch or the close of another day's play to reminisce, they invariably praise a familiar triumvirate.

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Diplomats would put Yorkshire's national heroes in strict alphabetical order: Geoffrey Boycott, Raymond Illingworth and Fred Trueman. That saves any accusation of bias.

Next would come – in no particular order, which is surely how they would prefer it – a much larger group of slightly lesser mortals but no less important players in the county's history.

John Hampshire, Philip Sharpe, Ken Taylor, Don Wilson, Bob Platt, Bryan Stott, Doug Padgett, Tony Nicholson, Dickie Bird, Richard Hutton, Chris Old and Jimmy Binks all fit into that category and of them all, it is perhaps the last-named who remains the least heralded yet was perhaps the most influential in the doings of Yorkshire cricket in its last golden era, other than the captains and their multi-capped internationals.

Good judges regard Binks as among the best of Yorkshire's roll-call of wicketkeepers, stretching back to David Hunter, taking in Arthur Dolphin, Arthur Wood and Don Brennan along the way and coming through to more recent times with David Bairstow and Richard Blakey.

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Binks was as impressive taking the extremely rapid Trueman as he was keeping to the sometimes unplayable Johnny Wardle and Bob Appleyard. Later, he would stand up flawlessly to the faster-than-medium Platt, Nicholson and Hutton.

His record of dismissals for Yorkshire stands at 1,044 (872 caught, 172 stumped) which ranks him second behind Hunter (1,190) and just ahead of Bairstow (1,004). But perhaps the most remarkable of all the statistics about Binks in that from his debut against Nottinghamshire in June, 1955, and his farewell appearance in 1969 he played his entire career in 412 consecutive first-class matches.

Born in Hull on October 5, 1935, Jimmy Binks was soon identified as a talented wicket-keeper but had to overcome the challenge of Roy Booth, from Huddersfield, before he could be sure of his place in the Yorkshire team as Brennan's successor. Once there, he was immovable, as a bonus proving useful with the bat as well as brilliant behind the stumps with his marvellous technique, "soft" hands and amazing stamina. His top score for Yorkshire was 95 against Middlesex at Lord's but he played many valuable innings in defence.

He holds the record for the number of catches in an English first-class season with 96 in 1960 and with the 11 stumpings he made that summer he became one of only seven wicket-keepers to claim over 100 victims in a season. At the end of his final season in 1969, he was named one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year.

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Perhaps almost as valuable as his contribution with gloves and bat was the intelligence Binks brought to Yorkshire cricket. His appreciation of how the bowlers were performing, how the pitch was playing and an ability to spot a previously undetected weakness in a batsman made him a quiet but highly-regarded adviser to his captain as well as an undemonstrative but no less influential senior member of the dressing room.

His greatest misfortune in another otherwise wonderful career was that he only won two England caps due to the preference for Godfrey Evans, John Murray, Geoff Millman and Jim Parks on the selectors' presumption that they were batter batsmen; none of them were superior to the peerless Binks behind the stumps.

Ironically, when he did earn England selection, for the 1963-64 tour of India under the captaincy of Mike Smith, he was called up to open the batting in three innings during his two Tests, the second and third of the series, and in one he made 55 as he shared a stand of 125 for the first wicket with fellow-Yorkshireman Brian Bolus.

In both those Tests, Parks was played as a specialist batsman but England opted to re-employ him behind the stumps, at the expense of Binks, for the last two matches of a series in which all five Tests were drawn.

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When he retired from first-class cricket at the age of 34 to take up an appointment with Fenners, the Hull engineering company whose chairman, Sydney Hainsworth, was a great supporter of Yorkshire, Binks' hands, unlike so many in his trade, were unmarked.

Throughout his career, he suffered one injury – a broken finger in 1966 – and he did not allow that to interfere with his amazing run of appearances.

As Ted Lester, the former Yorkshireman batsman, once remarked to county historian Derek Hodgson: "Jimmy could come straight off the field and play the piano."

Binks later emigrated to the United States and enjoys good health in retirement in Grass Valley, California, making occasional visits as well as keeping in touch with his former team-mates by phone.

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He was proud to be back in his native county in 2006 to be installed as the first president of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club Former Players' Association at Headingley and has returned twice since then for Association functions.

Bryan Stott, the Association's chairman, one of Binks's contemporaries who still receive a Christmas card each year, said: "He still has that cheeky smile on his face whenever we see him and he's in great shape."

That in itself is a tribute to a cricketer whose second and final Test appearance came exactly 46 years ago – January 29-February 3, 1964 – in what was Calcutta.

Jimmy Binks factfile

Born: Hull, October 5, 1935

Yorkshire debut: 1955

Retired: 1969

Yorkshire record: 491 matches; highest score 95; 6,745 runs at 14.69; 872 catches, 172 stumpings

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England record: Two matches; highest score 55; 91 runs at 22.75; eight catches

Honours: seven County Championships; Gillette Cup 1964 and 1969; one of Wisden's five Cricketers of the Year in 1969; president, Yorkshire CCC Former Players' Association 2006-7